Shippai to meiyo

 In 1993, John Mellencamp wrote Case 795 (The Family). True to John's grassroots revolution he said the words that were too brutal to voice out loud:

How many days does it take to make us weak?

And how many hours do people spend lonely?

In the heart of the heart the family lay dying

The ruin of a nation lies at our feet, yeah

I agree with the statement that there seems to be a movement to destroy the concept of family in today's society. In the middle of the song, John hints that the man's terrible actions were the result of his childhood experiences, perhaps during a time when things were supposed to be better. It's a sad truth.Image by Ante Hamersmit upslapsh.com

Back in 76, I recall a friend of mine telling me that his father would wake up early in the morning and being dressed in nothing except steel-toed work boots would kick the crap out of him for no reason.  The rest of the family would lie in their beds clearly letting it happen because intervention meant a much worse fate. 

My parents separated on and off for two years until finally divorcing when I was 10.  They were young, but they loved us. My sisters and I did not live in a model family structure, but because of the good people and love around us, we did not know the meaning of the word dysfunctional.

I don't know how to explain what came in later decades. My boys were born in the time when I was 38 to 40 years old. When I see what some of their generation deals with for parents I am shocked. What happened?  They are so abandoned.  For the most part, it seems to be the generation after us that really made a mess, and by extension, we had some sort of part in that.  Here is the thing though, I cannot for the life of me tell you what that is!

I do not know how a parent can look at their own child and not feel anything but love, admiration, respect, and self-sacrifice. I may be somewhat over-reflective, in my choreographing the moves of the contingency of hand-to-hand survival in a world full of flaming arrows streaming over the wall of the facade of our delusional safe haven.

Those who lack the instinctive forcefield of parental stamina have in common a self-serving desire for nothing more than the next social event designed to entertain them. It is vanity, it is a lack of imagination.  The need to be plugged in and entertained. It began with television and grew from there.

We grew an army of careless self-indulgent parental units whose mission statement is nothing more than, "What's in it for me?" Tragedy unfolds within the walls of where they live. So many people, together, living alone. All of this written here today, I STILL CANNOT UNDERSTAND IT!

Yeah, I know.  I have been stuck in this Generational Contrast Theme Park lately.  Because of that, I have to say, that all of our generations have their failures. They also have their treasure. Those loving parents who are advocates, cheerleaders, mentors, admirers, and allies of their offspring.  What decade you were born does not matter.  What your home was like also does not need to matter. You make your choices.  There are those of you, I am honored to know. You stand firm and never give up. Meiyo.

Its only a paper moon (AI edited version)

  "When you start to understand math and appreciate the genius of music, the path ahead becomes clearer and you start to see home in the distance. The journey may have been difficult, but it has also been enlightening. Looking around, I notice that people of all ages are relying on junk information, education, and sound bites to survive."

"As someone who has been alive for a long time, I have noticed that many people nowadays seem to have received a mediocre education that resembles that of a vending machine. This makes me wonder if the time spent at arcades on Friday nights back in 1982 had anything to do with it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed going to arcades just as much as everyone else did, but unlike most people, I had to work hard for every penny in my pocket. That's why I couldn't afford to spend all my money on arcade games. So, I'm curious, where did your sense of reason go?"

An old friend of mine asked me back in 1986, in South Texas, if we were alone. At the time, I took his question lightly but now I understand the gravity of it. The sound of an explosion played in reverse is similar to the ringing that I've been hearing. Today, the intensity of that sound is rising, and it feels like an earthquake that's about to engulf everything, just like in the song "A Day in the Life."

Today, I feel a sense of determination as I walk down Main Street. I am impressed by the sight around me, until I realize that everything I see is made of cardboard and wooden stakes. The sound bites that have been crudely spliced together are slowly becoming their truth. I believe someone needs to show them the reality of the situation, but we, as their mentors, are too distracted by technology to do so. This is where we must acknowledge our shortcomings and take responsibility for our actions. Hindsight is indeed 20/20, and it can be painful to reflect on past mistakes.

Photo by Lena Polishko on Unsplash

The method we choose for our children to attain education may seem crucial, but I have come to realize that it's quite the opposite. Our education system is broken, confused, misaligned, and impractical, except for a few remarkable exceptions that I am proud to call family. It's challenging to comprehend what it means to grow up in this era.

"It all comes back to the words my father said to my sister many years ago: 'It's the love.' Like the great prophet Christine McVie once said, 'Love Will Show Us How.' I hear you, Christine. Despite society's attempts to corrupt my children, they make the right decisions with strength and conviction when it truly matters."

"This can only imply that TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram creators have no real influence when compared to children who grew up surrounded by love and protection. Though you may believe you have achieved something, you have yet to prove your worth when it truly matters."

Note: I cannot help but try this out, not because I think AI can improve the written word, but because it can keep in check interpretations and I can learn from these.  It is fascinating.

Crossroads (the AI edited version)

 "I feel that the number 58 marks a significant point in my life where multiple timelines have merged. It has allowed me to witness how the foundations I have laid have impacted and will impact my future, or at least that's what I believe based on the current trajectory. These aren't just mere reflections or recollections. For those who have visited my thoughts often, you already know that. I'm referring to full-blown algebraic epiphanies that have finally provided me with answers to my life, which I have previously described as random particles spinning through the void."

"The first thing to note is that I am incredibly fortunate in every possible way. Over the years, all the knowledge and skills I have gained were scattered like puzzle pieces in the vast hangar bay of my existence. While I could access them in a reactive manner to keep me moving forward, today they seem to be fitting together like a puzzle, propelling me towards my goals."

"Recently, some of my friends have experienced devastating losses. It is a stark reminder that even though time is supposed to follow certain rules, many of them seem unfair, and sometimes time doesn't follow them at all. I believe this means that we cannot wait until tomorrow to take responsibility for our actions. It also highlights the importance of living in the present moment because the future is not guaranteed."

"I feel both tall and strong, as well as weak and small, in the midst of the eclectic melting pot that makes up my existence. It's truly humbling and paralyzing to see where it's all headed. I've started to wonder if my intuition about the undercurrent that pursued me in the fourth dimension over 40 years ago was correct. I long to see the curvature of the million-mile beach stretched straight, so I can take in the vast expanse. The counterpoint, which is so far away but reached me a century ago, just might be me. For a moment, time, my pursuer, yielded, giving me a linear view."

There should be no confusion. I am familiar with the OP-4. I understand that I may not emerge as the victor, but the mere chance to participate is significant. The ultimate achievement in this conflict is being present in this moment. Nothing else holds any significance. It is my actions in the present that matter the most.

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

Note:  I noticed that Grammarly the AI tool was offering to improve what was written, so I decided to call it out.  At first, I was not sure what to think about it.  But then I noticed 2 things: 

1. It does not sound like me.

2. Some of my words that are talking about others are missing grammatical markers that specify I am talking about others so the AI interprets this as "talking about me" which makes sense from the introspective nature of the context.

Crossroads

 58 is a number in which many timelines of my life have merged.  I have gotten to see how foundations I have laid have done and will do far into the future, or at least I like to think so based on trajectory. These are not just mere reflections and recollections.  If you the reader have visited often you know I do that.  No, I am talking about full-blown algebraic epiphanies that finally provide answers to my life which I have previously described as random particles spinning through the void.

The very first takeaway is that I am extremely fortunate in all ways imaginable.  All of the knowledge and skills I have amassed over the years used to sit in this pile in the giant hangar bay of my existence. Yeah, I could access that in my typical reactionary way if needed and it kept the vehicle moving down the road. Today somehow, many of the pieces are fitting together like a puzzle that suddenly makes progress towards its goal.

Recently there have been friends who have seen insurmountable losses. It is a reminder that although time says it has rules, many of them seemingly unfair, sometimes it still does not play by them. I know in my heart this can only mean that accountability is not something that we will do tomorrow.  It also demands that we be here now because in that book, there is no tomorrow.

I feel tall and strong in the wake of the formation of the eclectic melting pot of my existence and yet I feel weak and small. To see where it was all headed is truly humbling and paralyzing. I slowly began to wonder if I was right about the undercurrent that pursued me in the fourth dimension over 40 years ago.  To have the curvature of the million-mile beach stretched out straight so I can see that million-mile expanse.  The counter point which is so far away and yet reached me a century ago just might be me. Time, my pursuer, yielded for a moment, giving me a linear view.

Let there be no misunderstanding.  I know the OP-4.  I know I do not win, but the opportunity provided is an opportunity nonetheless. The greatest triumph in the battle is to be here now. Nothing else matters. It is what I do right now. 

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

It's only a paper moon

  When the math begins to make sense in your life and the music is revealed for its genius, the road widens and home comes into view. The journey has been nebulous and yet very revealing.  I look around me and see that young and old, people are surviving on junk nutrients of information, education, and sound bytes. 

For those who have been on this earth as long as I have, you have sold out to the vending machine education.  It makes me wonder if the Friday nights at the arcade in 1982 had anything to do with it. I loved those arcades just as much as the rest of you, except I worked for every cent in my pocket, so I had more important things to do with my money. Where did you lose reason?

There was an old friend who asked me back in 1986 in South Texas, "Is it just us?" I took his remark rather tongue in cheek, but there was a base of seriousness to it that had been ringing in my ears.  Today I know what that ringing is.  When you record the sound of an explosion and then play it backward, this is what it sounds like.  Today, volume and intensity rise into shaking the very walls of everything, about to suck up that initial strike like A Day in the Life.

Today, the coming of age rises with conviction. As I walk down the center of Main Street, I am impressed, until I come to the realization that everything I see is made of cardboard propped up on wooden stakes.  The sound bytes crudely spliced together are becoming their truth. Someone needs to show them, but we are their mentors and our distraction with technology is manifest. This is where we find what we really did. Yeah, hindsight is 20 / 20. Rub it in.

Photo by Lena Polishko on Unsplash

How we let our children attain their education may seem important, but I have learned it is exactly the opposite of that. In an education system that is broken, confused, misaligned, and inapplicable, except for a couple of stellar exceptions which I am proud to call family, it is hard to understand the sum of growing up these days.

It all comes back to those words my father told to my sister so many years ago: "It's the love." Like the great prophet Christine McVie once said "Love Will Show Us How." I see you, Christine.  Despite what society has tried to do to corrupt my children, when it comes to decisions that really matter, they make the right ones with great strength and conviction.

This can only mean that all of you TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram creators are not even making a dent in true influence when facing off with kids who grew up protected by love.  Yes, you may think you really are something, but when it really counts, you haven't done anything.

Register 2 is open, no lines, no waiting

 I try, but it takes work.  I work in the tech industry and the management of systems and their security makes complete sense.  The other side of it is that a 16-year-old kid can have more marketing success than Maxwell House Coffee back in the 1970s. Powered by frozen nutrition, microwaved into cardboard delicacy and energy drinks, those warriors of the sky rule. Of course, MH did not have the internet back then, so it is not a fair game.

I have 5 blog sites.  3 of them run the same content simultaneously.  One is a cooking blog and the other is not updated very often. Blogger is interesting because the full story can be read without ever entering the story itself.  This is mildly detectable in that the website gets many hits, but the articles themselves cannot reveal audience appeal. Blogs should be convenient, and I get that.

The young minds who tell us how simple it is on YouTube and TikTok fascinate me.  You can see that it is really as simple as they say. But there still seems to be a generational playing card that is missing.  I don't know about you but there has always been something inside me that will not stand for "great mysteries".  Like that man sitting on the sidewalk looking up at Harry Calahan, I gotta know.

I know in my heart there is a formula that includes how you approach these platforms. I wonder what line I need to be in to gain that understanding.  Let's face it, you know what I mean. That Russian Roulette we play at the grocery store in which we have been there too long and know that we likely have spent more than we set out to.  We approach that great and painful staging area in which the gauntlet of impulse items taunt us from either side statistically shaking loose dollars from our pockets.  We do that quick inventory of what others have in their carts, calculating how fast that line will move compared to the next aisle.  We assimilate the contributing factors; is the cashier too old, therefore slow, too young and inexperienced, and will choke on the produce codes? Does the bagger look like he knows where he is?  Are both of them too chatty? God forbid, does it look like someone is going to pull out a checkbook?

I suspect my Gen-X brain can only absorb a small amount of data concerning marketing on today's web when it comes to the social scene since it is coming at me so fast.  I am okay with this.

A view from the mountaintop

John said it well, "When they tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career when you can't really function you're so full of fear." -John Lennon, Working Class Hero 1970

Image by Mohamed Hassan pixabay.com

In my childhood, the coming-of-age group was the baby boomers.  Their parents had come through the Great Depression, and the 2nd world War and then raised them in the post-war 1950's. That generation augmented a way of life that set a bar that could never be erased from the collective consciousness. It is then ironic that the boomer generation would rebel against this perfect diorama that their parents constructed for them to live. Thanks to the weeds of Korea and Vietnam, success and blood seemed synonymous.

Rebellion or not, boomers did check into that 50s model in the late 70s and early 80s. It seemed inevitable.  Little did they know, it was coming apart foundational. The dream was being sold, merged, migrated, and dissolved. The safe haven would be nothing more than running from one structure into another during a tornado. 

We Generation X'ers had the unique perspective of believing that we were pursuing our grandparents' lives while we were in grammar school, and our parents' lives while we were in high school, but being taught that we would produce intangible goods.  It seemed ludicrous. 

It was during the 1980s that the greatest deception of all took place.  It would victimize young people emerging into adulthood. Like a hard hammer strike to an anvil, a blow would be taken to their lives before they even walked out into the light of the workforce. No focus?  Nothing to worry about.  No direction?  No problem.  No desire? It doesn't matter. Like terminal cancer, the poison idea that you had to go to college spread, sweeping young people up by the millions, destroying their lives forever, obliterating the chance that they will ever break free of the chains that bound them down.

Not all college is bad, just most of it. In the wake of brainwashing that college is needed and then a financial system that programs young brains the buy the lie that it is normal to take on predatory debt which can only be likened to the ultimate betrayal of someone you trust implicitly, at 55 years old the once young student works at a job they did not need the degree for.  Broken and weary, they repeat the mantra, tomorrow, I will make it out of this.  They said it at 25, 35, 45, you get the idea.

OK, I know this is a sore subject. We all have our things.  Remember Sanda Bullock in Gravity when she was moving from one vessel to the next to the next to make it home?  That is what my career path has been like!  Much of it is my own fault. In 1987, between January 1st and December 31st, I worked 6 different full-time jobs.  No overlap either! Mix wild days like this with an unhealthy appetite for alcohol and the ride is real.  I suspect just as unsettling as knowing I might never pay off a college loan.

Generation X is about to turn 60 and nothing has changed.  Y and Z are in shock and also working with a fraction of the facts. I want to scream from the rooftops the warnings they need to hear, but the fog is so thick that even the sound is saturated by it and my words fall to the ground. Yes, Leonard, there it is again.  Man!  That guy really knew his stuff!

As technology continues to take away the interaction that we have with each other, we are losing the very texture that gives us strength and confidence. Being an X-er, I have a very unique vantage point in which I can see five generations. There are things that gen Z  does not realize the advantage of. Information that they could have in their hands in three minutes. Used to take us an entire year to gather. If they could only know what life is without being part of a collective, how amazing would that be?

The constant attack of pressure to buy, to borrow, to conform to competing with those around us is getting stronger all of the time. Like it or not, it is a matrix. I heard a great question the other day. "If no one else could see this item I feel the need to buy, would I still purchase it? I know the answer to this was almost scandalous to me. 

There is no turning back on this road.  I know what I know and that cannot be undone. All of the random particles spinning through the void really do mean something.  I am happy to report this a mere 8 years later.  It's getting better all the time.

Undercurrent

 There is a tide in daily life that cannot be seen.  It is that subliminal pull that defies logic because of its primal power.  How can everyone not see its overwhelming strength?  It burns through me, starting inside, then pours into the space outside of me like light flooding the void of darkness. Waves push against me as I try to catch my breath. I look for the reassurance of who I am, the definition, and suddenly the current sweeps me away. Today, no stand is taken, no argument given, no flag placed in resolution.

Into the ocean, the battle lines are drawn.  I am just as I was in 1969 looking out into that hallway light on Lillian Road.  The longer I looked at the light, the further away it got.  One can only understand dimensions that are not their own while they are there.  As I returned, I thought for sure I could hold the memories I what I just saw, I knew I could.  But as the light grew closer, every second that passed, understanding slipped through my fingers.  

It took nearly a decade but I could at least describe something of what it was like. I was lying on a cold countertop-like table and there was a light but scratchy blanket over the top of me.  Someone I knew was there. They coexisted just barely from sight on the edge of a water clearing that I could see for millions of miles. Suddenly she lifts her arm and points at me and starts lecturing me.  As she takes one step after another toward me with the arm raised, I begin matching her steps to keep the same distance.  She is like distant thunder that I cannot avoid later. I cannot let her reach me, and even though she is a million miles away still, she is so powerful she has already overtaken me 100 years before I was born.

It was quiet for a few years and without warning, I journeyed back.  Every time I go, I seem to be able to carry something back across the terminator between that dimension and our own. This time, it was crowded around me.  There she was, one million miles away, in pursuit, yet having already won.  There was silence in the crowd.  We could all hear ourselves trying not to breathe too heavily and that is when we heard words that meant, what did you do? Our lamentation swept through us all like a shock wave from an atomic blast.  It was so hard that it flung me across space and time and right through the barrier.  I woke up sad and scared because I thought I finally understood where I was.

Since then, I have only peered through the window when it was found.  I could momentarily feel the table, the blanket, and a fast sharp strike against the strings of a cello. 40 years have passed since I returned.  I cannot say that I understand today any better than I did then.  I often wonder if maturity allows powerful things in your life to get sorted out and manifest. When we don't understand it is chaos.  Or is it nothing like that at all. 

I like to believe it was the around-the-bend thing.  Time is for our convenience and is relative.  Looking at it from a different angle with everything really happening all at the same time, and being able to see in linear form instead of in the curvature gravity provides. That eternal shoreline is the only way my mind can explain it upon my return.  Talent, purpose, drive, and desire personified. Suddenly I am exhausted. 

Born in a prison

 I was walking down the road.  I was small and everything around me was built to have me see it in one way only.  I could see it in my house, I could see it on TV.  It was on the radio in the news and in songs.  I was there and it was who we were.

There were voices in the air about how things were not fair, and it seemed possible, I could not really see it, because it was the men who came before me who painted my entire world, and it was going to take a lot to see it for what it really was.

There was a bridge that I crossed and the land was changing, but all of the knowledge in my head was the same. I could see the landscape changing around me, I even claimed to understand, but I still had far to go.

As decades passed, the journey to a new world could not even be understood and yet somehow, in ultimate fractions, I cracked the shell, I broke the chains of ignorance, I shuttered at the ridiculousness of humanity.

I know that because of the time in which I was born, I will find things in the corners that will need to be thrown away for many years still.  If I were to speak, and you only saw what I wore, what I drove, or where I lived despite putting my heart into every word, how would I feel?  If I spoke the same language as you and yet you did not listen, how would I feel? How would it feel if this happened every day of my life?  What would it be like if you only saw me through your own distorted glass of perception that had no basis at all on who I really am? How strong really are you who have dealt with this for a lifetime?

You and I were born in captivity.  Me in ignorance. You in my ignorance. It is something I think of all the time.  I think of it in context in the past and of course now as well.  The contrasts showing the progress provide both great pride and embarrassment. Until perfection arrives, it will always be this way.  The only way in which I know to stay the course is to put myself in your shoes as I walk along, even though I may never truly know what it is like. Sumimasen...

Waking up

 Nights on a sleepless train, passing through places familiar and those unfamiliar as well. As we speed through the night I think I may be, but I am never really sure that I am me. How superficial is the normal life? How important is life that is not normal? Am I contemplating things past, present, and future that really matter?  Are those who do not, wasting precious time?

I woke up every day, heading out into the daylight. Figures emerged from the corners and shadows, mocking my movements to blend in. They created a cadence that allowed them to project ideas and direction that I felt were my own. They tied me to the table in which contract after contract was written that would ensure that I could never know what was true. More so, I would always think the problem was me.

As I sat in the dark room in which I could barely see the outlines of the things around me, there were knocks on the door which I thought were my rescue. I always hoped that one of those times, someone smash the door down, ending this indentured servitude. But it never happened.

Despite the train moving in many directions through the night, I can really only move in one direction. I think I know why I keep getting on the train.  I believe that I have always been aware and I want to know that all the years that I was bound to that table I knew something and was contemplating something that fits into the puzzle today. Yes, I understand that if I am looking for a return on investment, the very fact that I am who I am today would be enough. It is because of the great thief time, that I hunt for more substance. I seem to have been born to compete with time.

There are 8 billion others around me and yet, the airwaves report there is trouble on the horizon and even though there are answers, we just have to look through the glass and learn. It is then the glass is stirred into a vortex of propaganda and predatorial conformity.  Just like the man selling his miracle product in a bottle, he promises that we can be as normal as everyone else. What a terrible thing to want to be.

As the seasons changed I walked wearily into another city that clearly had been scorched earlier.  As I walked along the road there were pretty flowers growing through the cracks.  They could grow even more, perhaps even into trees, all they wanted was my attention.  I wanted to give it, after all, what is the harm?

It is not likely that one could be hit by a meteor and get knocked off course, but thankfully I was.  When I woke up I could see that the flowers were parasites and the ground was laden with traps. The very air was poison and the sun was deadly. Everyone was walking abound unaware of the parasites attached to them and the chains on their feet.  It made me sick, and it made me angry.  I vowed to not go back.  Despite being raised in a world where I was told all of this was normal and that I could never get away from it, I know now that it is a lie. I am not playing anymore. I know where I am.

Erased

 When I shared the previous post "I don't even know her name"  with my wife, who was present during the story, she told me that she did not see it that way.

She said that she saw a strong woman who aptly raised a strong family herself and was remembering the finest moments of that life as she saw us with our little one just beginning with him.

As I think about that, I know that every bit of that could also be the case.  I like how the information that we had that night lends itself to either of these ideas. I imagine us sitting with her and asking questions about her life to determine which of these it is.

This is the second time in the recent past that someone has told me that they did not see the events of a time in any way as I did. This brings up an interesting question: Am I weird or is the perspective differential relative to personal context?

Last month I wrote about Poppy Crum and how she has exposed empathic technology.  The tech reads individual naturally occurring signals from us and uses them to offer custom-tailored advertising to us. Could it be that the difference is just that?  More of how we all see the world differently.

I have to now wonder, is tech advertising to us on a personal basis but brainwashing us into idealistic conformity on social media? How many people do we know in which they just share things that fall into the awareness category?  Long heart-wrenching declarations get washed away like watercolor paints when the post ends with the words: "If you feel the same way hold your finger over this post and share to your wall."  I don't know about you, but that just nullifies everything I just read.

When you remove the perspective of the author, it becomes something else.  Last night, well after dark, I drove into the local Walmart parking lot. There were no outside lights on at all.  The Walmart asterisk symbol glowed off the building and you could see the lights inside the entry doors, but otherwise, it was a blackout.  I grabbed my phone to snap a photo, intending to fling it up on social media and ask, who switched Walmart to "dark mode"?  This is what I got.  The camera saw something that I did not and in doing so, also malfunctioned beautifully into this cascade of something simple and composite. No "dark-mode" post for me.

I am hopeful that social media will not erase our individual emotions and perspectives.  If you believe that cannot happen, you are naive.  In the 1960s as televisions became a regular appliance in the homes across America, the very defined local accents of people all over the country started getting watered down.  Later, syndication of the news erased local personalities.  Today, you are being erased. 

Please do not let that happen.  I reference Santa Mira again, from the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  They are coming this way.  Speak for yourself.  Say what you feel, not what someone else packages up and coaxes us into sharing. It makes me sad.

I don't even know her name

A couple entered the large main room at the Hartness House.  Behind them, a woman who had to be close to 90 was in tow. She was small and frail-looking, she said nothing as we spoke with the man and woman with her. 

We had just taken a couple of photos of us with our 6-month-old.  We explained to the couple that we had just been married in this room 2 years ago in front of the large fireplace.  Now we had Liam. He was bright-eyed and ready for everything. 

Our conversation was brief and everyone walked around the room admiring its antiquity.  As the couple was about to leave, the old woman who was only listening up to this point grabbed my arm with a steel grip that seemed stronger than what I expected.  She was close and locked eyes with me.  "I envy you!" She said the words pushed with desperate breath. The weight of how she did it was like when someone is being held prisoner and calling for help. It was interesting in the fact that it seemed that she said it so that only she and I could hear it.

They were gone, but she left a crater in my entire life consciousness. It was a warning almost from myself decades later that in reality, those decades would pass like they were only 47 minutes in the future.  It was a tale of regret from maybe a woman who had taken more left turns than right ones when she should have.  It was the perfect perspective, without the time or the means to ever realize it. I knew for sure, she had taken something for granted in her life and now she could not go back.

It was one of those moments that if this were a science fiction movie, I might wake up as her the next morning and she as me.  It was so heavy that I worried a little in the moments after that it could really happen.

One thing I knew, she had given me a great gift.  I needed to appreciate what I had right here and right now. This was a kick in the head in which every time I was to get overwhelmed with the things in life that meant nothing, I needed to get my act together. Her desperation made me want to cry. 

Tonight was two years since we had started our life together and many fantastic things were happening.  There would be many trials to remind me of how good I have it.  This woman, who came from nowhere I knew met us on the precipice of our future and told me to get over stuff and to just live. Don't be an idiot. Be here now.  Just shut up and be here. In three words, she still speaks to me today.

It is now 20 years later. Our momentary meeting changed me forever.  It made me feel her great regret in a way that would never be possible, and I don't know how. I have also learned that I did fail to always be where I was, and maybe we all do some of that.  

20 years later, I have one regret about that night October 27, 2003.  I wish I had asked what her name was. For someone who made such an impact on me, it does not seem right that I don't even know her name.

No place I'd rather be

 In the fall of 2018, Noah and I turned onto the paved road on his way to school.  The resonance of the Yo La Tengo song, Big Day Coming was building up over the speakers in the truck.  It begins with a harmonic resonation that like a turbine grows louder.  As the lyrics join, they are almost part of the music and gently fold into the waves.  Noah had been quiet.  He suddenly said, "I feel like this song represents where I have been over the last couple of weeks."

It was such a deep statement.  Its dream-like, slow-motion carnival-ish sound gently fills the space you are in as compressed thought slowly fills waking awareness. The fact that my 13-year-old at the time could make such a connection to art was beautiful.  It told me that he was born and raised with an aptitude that others could strive to achieve by studying and never hit the target.

I love how even before your children are born, you can feel their dominant personality traits.  For Noah, I felt compelled to give him the middle name Israel. This is a name that was common in the 1800's.  It is his middle name because when I thought about this child coming into the world, I could not help but to think of my Grandfather. Israel was my Grandfather's middle name.

He was an exceptionally intellectual man.  The knowledge he possessed seemed unlimited. He needed to know things all of his life and he was not content unless he dived into that knowledge and owned it. The hundreds of conversations that I had with him until he passed when I was 22 were many of the best moments in my life.

Noah demonstrates so much likeness to my Grandfather's absolute need to master complex information. It is how he has been at every age.  He becomes restless if progress is not being made and pushes even harder to make things happen.

Last night, we went to Springfield to rescue a friend of his who was having car trouble.  The weather was horrific.  At sundown, a very wet and heavy snow was falling at a good 2 inches an hour.  A few hours later, we went out to get Noah's friend.  By this time, ice and rain were falling out of the sky. The roads were not plowed. We picked up his friend and took him home up steep treacherous dirt roads.

On the way home, it is more of the same.  We began our trek over the mountain and as we got into the longest decline, I put the truck in low range, something I think I have only done 2 other times since getting it 9 years ago.  We came to a point where the slope was very steep with only ditches on either side.  We stopped and looked at each other.  It might have been ok, but in this mess, it would probably be daybreak by the time someone could come out to pull us out if we were not successful.

I turned the truck around and we backtracked up the mountain.  Once we were on a paved but unplowed road, Noah added right into the middle of a sentence, "And I'm 18." Just like that, it was January 10th. At 3:18 AM, he is 18.  I could not believe how fast it went by.  I often wonder if I could time travel and visit myself, would I grab my younger self by the shoulders and shake me, demanding that I be there in the moment. Would it still be lost on me? Is there no way, to savor all of the richness around us during these years?

No man ever stated this better than the master himself, Leonard Cohen.  In the song, Closing Time, he laments; "And I lift my glass to the awful truth, which you can't reveal to the years of youth, except to say it isn't worth a dime."  So, my friends, there it is.  Should I now travel back to my younger self, I would be as credible as a crazed person screaming that there was an alien invasion coming.

All I could say is Noah and I were tromping around out there in terrible conditions and feeling like we were the last 2 people in the world.  All things considered, it was a fine way to cross into the 18th January 10th with him.  

We'll leave the light on for you

 An old friend named Joel stopped in last week. I did not think that I would be seeing him any time soon and honestly, perhaps not at all. But, he is here and it has been nice catching up with him and his friends. Joel is not a real person, but a favorite in contemporary fiction circa the Summer of 1990.

This was an exciting time in history for me.  September 8, 1989, was the last time I went to work.  That was the last time I worked for the City of Port Aransas and my last official day of drinking. Nine months had passed.  

On January 8, 1990, I started Basic Training with the Army.  This was one of the most uncharacteristic choices I have ever made.  The backlash of alcoholic armageddon left me choosing what I felt at the time the opposite of my recent past; instead of running, I was going to dig in and fight.  I met a man who was so sure of himself.  He had the military in his history, but he was no conformist.  In fact, he was the most nonconforming person I had met to that point in my life.  His confidence in who he was became a crown jewel that I needed to possess.  The military seemed to be the way to get that. They welcomed the 24-year-old version of me with open arms.

I returned home from Basic in May and oddly, my life became directionless again as far as what I was going to do for a career.  Summer quickly came and I just sort of existed day to day. There was an old show that had begun at the dawn of the 80s that I had been watching every Thursday night, but it was on summer break.  On July 12, 1990, something wonderful happened.  A replacement series about the fictitious town of Cicely, Alaska tested the waters our our hearts with 8 episodes. Instantly, we all needed to know more about these unique people.

In the first 8, we fell in love.  Somehow it seemed that we always knew them and we had returned home.  In August, outside my staticky reception of WCAX channel 3 in Burlington, Vermont, the world was getting serious.  Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  Tensions had been mounting in the Persian Gulf all throughout the 1980s during the war between Iran and Iraq.  In 1987, the US began to reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers to deter attacks, and evidently, this move did not prevent blatant all-out aggression.

When I enlisted in the Army on 18 November 1989, nothing had happened since the invasion of Grenada on October 23, 1983, and before that, Vietnam was the last big conflict.  Joining the NH National Guard, I envisioned weekends and two weeks in the summer and maybe in the next 6 years aiding local flood victims.  Then 33 days later the US invaded Panama.  

On day three after Iraq invaded Kuwait, I could feel my future and from that day I verbally stated many times that I would be personally affected.  Over the next 90 days, the path grew more treacherous. Narrowly avoiding the first call-up of 600,000 US Reservists, we were first in line for the 2nd 600,000 activation. A fellow reservist appeared on my doorstep Monday evening November 12th, just as the first snowfall began. Our turn.

When you live on the surface of Mars, or similarly the desert of Saudi Arabia, you long for something to read that provides an escape.  Something that takes you away from here.  It does not look like this and is harmless and kind. I was at a PX one day at KKMC (King Khalid Military City).  Our convoy deviated from our normal route much to my co-driver/Assistant Platoon Sargent's desire.  We were carrying medical supplies from Log Base Alpha to a CASH (Combat Army Surgical Hospital) in the middle of nowhere.  

At the PX, I found a book written by Tom Bodet.  You may remember him as the guy back in the '80s and '90s who advertised for Motel 6.  He was probably best known for the catchphrase: "We'll leave the light on for you." The book was called End of the Road.  Wouldn't you know it, it was written about a small town in Alaska called End of the Road.  It was filled with quaint but lovable characters. Sound familiar? Best of all, it was as far from the Middle East as it gets.

I fell in love with these people.  Mr. Bodet made them easy to love and almost primary color defined sort of like in the old days of the Westerns when good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black.  It was not blatantly like that, but the flavor was there. Tom was sprinkling on some herb that made it so you just had to be a cold-hearted idiot not to accept the fine people of EOTR.

I passed this book on to over 20 friends while in the desert and it brought a lot of love and relief to a group of home sick people.  All of this time, I thought of my other Alaskan newly found friends in Cicely.  Would I ever see them again?

In 1991, back in the US, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I would see my friends in Cicely again. Now Monday nights at 10 PM, Northern Exposure graced our screens.  While NE gave us some of those spoon-fed moments in the first season that helped us adopt these wonderful people, they put the cheese away and did not get stuck within the boundaries of reality. A drama-comedy that on a moment's notice took on Twilight Zone turns, time travel, journeys through history, and many people's private dreams.  I not only came to love these friends but also respect them.

Northern Exposure never streamed.  Well, until 33 years later.  Very quietly, it suddenly showed up on Amazon Prime.  It is a fine thing to meet a town full of people at 25 years old and then revisit them when you are 58. I am savoring this trip down memory lane and it is a joy.  It is an amazing thing to discover how my experiences over the last 33 years affect and contrast with this part of our creative history.

I don't think Tom Bodet's End of the Road would have caught my eye that day at KKMC without my first having met those wonderful folks from Cicely Alaska.  This wondrous and composite turn of events, they brought me sweet relief and joy in a very barren and difficult place and time in the world.

The perspective of parenthood

I don't know if I will ever understand the perspective of parenthood.  I was listening to an aircheck of WCFL Chicago, from October 30, 1975, this morning.  If you are unfamiliar with what an aircheck is, it is a tape recording of a radio station from the past. Some of us in past decades loved our favorite radio stations or maybe wanted to be radio disk jockeys.  It was not uncommon to record hours of broadcasts from these stations.  

Decades later, any of these tapes that are still around, and there are thousands of them, made their way onto the internet for others to enjoy. There is nothing else in the world that comes as close to a time machine as these recordings. Back then radio stations were the social media of the day.  They were alive with the local personality of the community.  The grocery store advertisements and car commercials are such a joy to listen to, although their contrast to contemporary reality can be hard to digest.

Alice Cooper's Eighteen was playing. It was a sharp reminder that in just 2 days, my youngest is turning 18.  Although in many ways I feel that Noah has been over 18 in maturity for years, this is still hard for me. A proverbial slap of how fast everything has happened.

I remember Liam first coming home almost 21 years ago now and feeling that I would get to savor that stage of his life for so much longer than I did.  Ten seconds later he was 3 months, then 2 years. After that, it was a complete blur.

You would think that two and a half years later I would be wiser.  No amount of attention and appreciation can stop the runaway train of time. As we are just trying to keep everything upright and moving forward, our children grow at a rate that is difficult to comprehend.

I was recently talking with a friend who told me over the years he has hired people his children's ages and expected them to fulfill the tasks that he assigned to them and was confident that they could carry them out. There was no doubt that they were up to the task.

He then told me that his children at the same ages were just as capable, however inside he felt the need to oversteer them, frequently asking questions if they remembered that they needed to consider something or did they did this or that. As he said this, I realized that I could completely relate to this.

It is an anomaly.  I think my children are incredible, but why do I feel the need to steer them.  They constantly demonstrate that they are well-equipped to do this on their own.  I have to internally silence myself so often that I wonder sometimes what is the matter with me!

Mel Robbins once said that if others could hear how we talk to ourselves in our heads, we would be institutionalized.  This does have a ring of truth to it, doesn't it?  Thinking about this alleged lack of confidence that our offspring will do the right thing or remember all of the needed details, I have to conclude that it is not them that we as parents are questioning, but ourselves.  This is a self-assessment of our parenting abilities.  I don't think that we think we are bad parents, we are simply reeling from how fast it went by and how we wanted to do so much more.

I have learned more from all of my children in the last year than I have in all of my lifetime and I have determined that it is time to give them credit because their ability to interpret and learn is magnificent.  It is not about me.  I will say, that I do need to cut myself some slack.  Maybe we all need to just take a moment to admire what our children find in us and what they choose to do with it.

Saturday Night

 Saturday Night is a conceptual place that takes on the identity of an unlimited amount of worlds.  I hear the words and I am first transported to 1975. The song Another Saturday Night was released by Cat Stevens.  He did not write it, it was originally written and released by Sam Cooke in February 1963 on the album "Ain't That Good News". It was written by Cooke while he was staying at a hotel in which no female guests were allowed. The song was about a guy with money in his pocket but no girl to spend it on. This showed a picture of what one version of Saturday Night could look like. 

Let's not forget about the Bay City Rollers, 1975 again. Interestingly the song was originally released in the UK in 73 and it did not even make the charts.  But the bubble-gum pop/rock band got their revenge when it was released again in 75 in the US and by January 1976, had hit number 1 on the Billboard chart.

Saturday nights, sitting around a campfire in 1977 in East Alstead New Hampshire.  My cousin Dave and my Dad were building on Dave's family's log cabin.  We sat in what would be the floor space of the new cabin, at a small campfire while Dave sang Clementine for my cousin Steve and me.

Saturday nights at my Grandmother's house.  This is one of those places if I could choose a place to go back to, it is here. A wonderful dinner in the tiny kitchen on Carol Drive, followed by popcorn and creating things and laughter. Stories and warmth, in a house that smelled like fresh apples and honey.

Saturday nights in 1981 with Margie's family at Stafford Motor Speedway.  Nights like this always made me feel like it would be 20 years till I turned 20, and 50 years till I turned 30.  You get the idea.

Saturday nights in the smoky South Texas bar, jukebox playing familiar favorites.  As we threw darts drinking one-dollar Lone Star Beers, the 20-year age difference between Dad and I was not even there.

Saturday nights when everything came apart like a single-engine plane not making it to the end of the runway in one piece.  The thick fog of intoxication, bad judgment, and impulse.  The lack of understanding of consequences and how eventually, choices made, cannot be undone in one day.

Saturday nights in isolation in the woods, listening to old music and discovering that decisions made today are more far-reaching than I could imagine.

Saturday nights in a city ten thousand miles from home, listening to Armed Forces Radio, driving down into the port from Log Base Echo, hours from bad news and invasion.  There was no other life but this one. Bette Midler was shouting at us, "God is watching us!"  I slept the on a trailer deck, under another trailer.

Saturday nights riding with my son listening to Garrison Keiller's A Prairie Home Companion, Liam telling me in the acted-out radio play parts that he could actually see the people and places in the play.

Saturday nights yield infinite possibilities.  For you and for me, it is all different.  I think the thing that fascinates me the most is that, if you turn the dial on time by just a few hours, the universe in which we exist is completely different.  Saturday night contrasts Sunday morning like Earth does to Mars.  Saturday morning too being the opposite side of a coin making it impossible for both to exist in the same view.

One thing is for sure, that great unknown state of mind, that possibility of being in a place so unique in space and time awaits us all, carving its notch into days and times unlike its own. From the people on Monfort Road in Strong Maine in 1978 gathering at one neighbor's house to watch someone shout, "Live from New York...It's Saturday Night!" to having my little sons falling asleep on my lap as I sit in front of a campfire, July 4th weekend in 2008.  Owls calling from close by, echoing over a firefly-lit field.  It's all good.

The self destructive now

 There is a popular saying: What comes around goes around.  That has been happening and it has been difficult to see where it is leading. In my house growing up Paul McCartney and Wings was a common ambient sound in the background.  A popular listen for us was the Wings Wildlife album. The title track provides a haunting problem for those around in December of 1971 and on. The lyrics go deep and leave questions like a movie with an abrupt ending:

The word "wild" applies to the words "you" and "me".

While taking a walk through an African park one day,

I saw a sign saying, "The animals have the right of way".

Wildlife, whatever happened to,

Wildlife, the animals in the zoo?

We're breathing a lot,

a lot of political nonsense in the air.

You're making it hard for the people who live in there.

You're moving so fast, but, baby, you know not where.

You'd better stop, there's animals everywhere,

And man is the top, an animal too,

And, man, you just got to care.

Wild life, what ever happened to?

Whatever happened to?

There is a disintegration of life as we know it. Entire universes are disappearing and people hardly notice.  This time it is us and no one notices that the ground we stand on, the knowledge we have earned, and the foundations we have built are just fading from existence. The white noise of the internet, dropping poison digital propaganda leaflets into our path as we walk like drones to our own demise all along thinking that we have achieved something.  

I recall being 12 years old, walking down to a mom-and-pop store on North Elm St in Torrington, Connecticut, and purchasing my first New York Times.  I carried it home with great anticipation. At home, I savored every page. Today's generation could never know.  This was so much more than just news, ads, editorials, TV and radio listings, it was alive with the pulse of the center of the universe in the 1970s. 

In the fall of 1978, I would trek miles across Torrington on foot on a crisp October morning, walk into a mom-and-pop shop 2 doors down from Dee's Delicatessen, and pick up today's copy of the Boston Herald American.  Then, into Dee's, which was the hot spot for breakfast whether it was sit-down or to-go.  I would sit at that diner counter and right alongside all of those guys born in the early 1900s, I had coffee, and the paper would sing to me. Then off to school.

Yes, we knew papers were in trouble 30 years ago, that is old news. I saw a post from Jacob Ward, former Editor in Chief of Popular Science magazine.  He shared the sad news that Popular Science, in all forms was coming to an end 151 years after it began.  He pointed out that the magazine was so rich in history, such as an oil painting once existed for every single cover in past decades.  If you did not know, the covers were spectacular, sort of a Norman Rockwell meets sci-fi. 

In 2009, it was announced that Gourmet Magazine would stop publishing.  It turned the culinary world on its side, but thanks to distraction, culinary artists everywhere somehow survived. It was a shot across the bow however warning us that nothing anywhere is safe.

Isn't it ironic that entire lives are being erased with the stroke of a computer key? No drama here, only murder.  Change is the name of the game.  We are told that we have to adapt, and well, that is nothing new to me.  Now it seems we just from one burning ship to another in the stormy waters of our self-declared achievement.

The air raid sirens have been heard in the air. Corporate business parks everywhere were constructed in the 1980s and leased before 2020 see a mighty judgment coming.  The countdown is going and time is nearly up. This is a far-reaching implosion that will leave many in its wake.  Unfortunately, investing in this type of real estate was seen as a safe place to put retirement fund money, and now it is about to be brought to nothing.  

Somewhere from those ashes, someone with cash out there will purchase these derelict structures and turn some of them into housing, but it won't be enough. The tsunami is still coming.

The biggest demise of course is the history that we are discarding daily. We are disregarding the lives of those who came before us and heartlessly give no attention to that. I could spend a lifetime trying to explain where we were and know that no matter what, I would still fail to get it right.

What comes around, goes around. Who would have thought that we would have not only treated nature with such disregard but ourselves and the people who preceded us?

Looking through a frosted window

 One moment you are walking on firm ground, the next you are floating on the ISS. When you are on the ground, it has been ages since you have been floating, but when you are floating, it has been a few seconds. The days begin, and they are foreign but anticipated. Winter is here, but then again, not really, is it?

High above us, there is a change in the air. Ten minutes from now, the perpetual November crashes and burns. Quickly reduced to ashes, then covered in a fresh heavy snowfall. Be careful what you wish for.

Once surrounded by the white mental boundaries of our own making, some choices feel out of reach and opportunities present themselves. Nothing has changed; it is my perspective that is undergoing changes. 

I am stepping out under the forever gray sky, there are signs on the roads warning that it is now hours until the cloud overtakes us. I plan ahead as well as I can.  Anticipating and preparing. I realize that I have moved into the open vulnerable space without cover or concealment. 

It is a long trek out onto a bridge that I can only see a few feet out onto. A thick fog wall quickly fades the path ahead into oblivion. There is only one way to the other side, and this is it. The key is to live during this journey, to not wish life away as I take every cautious step on the icy surface.

In past years, warmth came over the airwaves and in crossing paths with good friends. Relief from the space station isolation came about from a hot and chaotic kitchen, testing personal barriers and pushing want into skill.

I went outside yesterday, and the snow has still not arrived.  It occurred to me that I have the opportunity to continue to do the things that I would normally do in the spring.  This is not a chance that I am given hardly ever. Winter can be perceived as a pause, but more importantly regeneration.

I found an old friend that I thought I would never see last night. I found that when I was just 25, I had a deep appreciation for such a friend, and in the 34 years that have passed since, it has only become more precious.

The gray days of the summer deluge have yielded to gray days of autumn, then onto gray days of perpetual November brown, and now rumors of winter. In the perceived oppression, focus and hard work are more important than ever.  In 2021, "There is a Tide" was the theme for the year for me.  Today, it begins to occur to me that it has not changed much when I look at the generational contrasts that exist today.  

The inaction that surrounds us now, and the attitude that things just happen to us, have no place in even a single day for me.  I will not sit idle and let our self-inflicted paralysis overtake me.  It is everywhere and experts carefully play within the delusion, gently holding the arm of those afflicted taking baby steps towards the door that will return them from the fourth dimension.

I wonder so much if this is only because the experts know of no real way to help, so like trying to pilot a vehicle up a snow and ice-covered hill, they feather the accelerator, but back off in micro increments trying to not break traction and lose control of the otherwise insignificant momentum.

I fall back to this mentality sometimes in theory, at least to create a list of accomplishments, to sell myself the idea that I am gaining.  I know that I am and there is a fire in me to make it go faster, but I cannot fall on my old wildcard tactics to create a shock and awe on the days. The theatrics were great but like society today, lack true substance. 

Four days from today, I might look out the window and see a different world, and then again, maybe I will not.

There is a war: Part 5

 3 million young men, some homeless, all jobless, many hungry, and with hungry loved ones at home answered the call.  A beacon promising 30 dollars wages a month, of which $25 was to be sent home, and better physical conditioning and more hiring appeal to those 18-25 years old.  It was hard work that made a difference in so many ways.  As I stood there on the last day of 2023 and read the sign telling of how Hapgood Pond came to be, I realized that it was highly likely that no young man who provided the hard manual labor to build this beautiful park was still alive today.

All over the country, from 1933 through 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps was designated to develop national resources in rural lands. Young unmarried men, wielding, saws, axles, shovels, and machinery worked long days, living in tents, eating together at long wooden tables, and served 3 meals daily. They built roads, bridges, and structures.  Run mostly by the Army they shared in the responsibility of taking care of nutritional and sanitary needs.

For a moment, I place my feet in the shoes of a young man, sitting on a bench at the dinner table under a newly built roof. Every muscle and joint in his body tells the tale of the hard days of work he has put in. He listens to the conversation that echoes off the roof planking above his head.  There is laughter, there is enthusiasm, homesickness, and loneliness.  For all of them, however, there is hope.  Something is happening. Promises of better days seem to be in the air.

Many of these men will not be alive by the spring of 1945 and what awaits them makes it look like they are playing in their backyards today.  Yes, there will be books and movies that tell grand stories of their heroic future, but there is so much more to that.  Being swallowed up by time itself, it becomes clear that there are bigger players controlling everything.

These parks not only edify spectacular achievements but also tell a tale of the last days of innocence.  The final years before we understood what the world we live in really is.

 It is the contrasts between what happened in this park in 1936 and what was happening to that same young man 7 years later in 1943 in Europe, crouched down in a 100 year old bombed out church, pinned down by enemy fire, not knowing how many of his friends are still alive.  He needs a moment to escape.  He closes his eyes.  He tries to shut out the sound of the artillery.  It takes every bit of concentration he has, but he manages to hear those voices under the structure at Hapgood Pond in the summer of 1936 before the rage spread across the globe and told everyone in the world what they were really here for. He laughs to himself because these two things can't live in the mind of one man.  Three seconds later, the sound of a nearby artillery explosion pulls him back, he is still here.

In the 1960s, the son of that young man who never made it back home packs up his car with heavy canvas tents, wife, children, and cousins and enjoys a vacation in a park that his father helped build back in the Depression. As he spends the days feeling the sand of the beach on his bare feet, his children swim in the water, that is possible because of the dam his father helped construct back in 1936. He tries so hard to imagine his young father, sitting on the wooden bench under the structure, eating a hot meal with dozens of other young men, weary from the hard day's work. 

The daydream does not last, however, because it always gets overshadowed by the imagined sound of artillery that eventually leads to the visit from two uniformed men to his childhood home.  He did not know then what it meant, but he could feel the heaviness of the moment and still does today.  He tries to push this from his mind, only wishing to think about the young man, building this beautiful place that families now enjoy.  It takes a little anger, but he does it.  He tries to touch things that he imagines his young Father also touching and taking in views that his father appreciated.  His children laugh and squeal with joy as they play on the beach.

In the 1980s, a grandson of the young man who built the camp arrives with his family, the tents are lighter, the mood is lighter and the stories immortalized yet obscure.  He only knows what his father told him and even that is sort of a facsimile today.  In the next 20 years, his family will stop coming here.  They will exchange this for tag-a-long campers, full hookups, and pathetic private campground recreational activities.  Before they know it, they will be 42 years old, with blood alcohol content at twice the legal limit, driving golf carts way too fast, singing, and yelling like they are still in college on a bender. Fortunately, everyone in their camping neighborhood is just like them, and that makes it funny.  For them.

Forty years later, I am standing in front of this sign.  I never knew the young man who helped build this park, but I remember you.  This far away I can see you as an innocent and down-and-out young man.  I can see your hopes and dreams.  I know what it is like to be torn from your universe and then put into another in which someone else controls everything.  I have contemplated your (our) end many times. As I come here in the future, I will always think of you.  You will always be important to me.  I have not forgotten you, sir.  Thank you.